Auld Sang Lyne
by Sareini
Summary: Evil Industries is asked to save the world... everyone else must have been busy.
1. Chapter 1

It had been a good day until the old man had turned up, Kaykor Death thought to himself afterwards. Things had definitely gone downhill from that point.

He and the other three members of Evil Industries had been sitting around a table in the Pocket D nightclub – **the** place to be, regardless of whether you were a hero or a villain – celebrating the success of their latest heist. They had stolen some sort of magic flute from the Circle of Thorns – Kaykor wasn't sure what exactly it did, but Orchid, who seemed to know the most about magic and magic artefacts out of the four of them (which wasn't exactly saying much) assured them it was pretty powerful. All Kaykor had to do now was stop his partners in crime from trying to actually **play** the damn thing, inadvertently break it or sell it on eBay.

"Why is it always magic flutes?" Geoff asked suddenly as he mulled over his pint. The others looked at him – well, Kaykor and Orchid looked at him, as Vraenar was apparently hypnotised by the flashing coloured lights of the nearby dance floor. "Well?" Geoff continued. "It's always flutes, or something else small and fiddly. Why aren't there any magic trombones, or oboes, or things like that?"

Kaykor was just struggling with the image of a mage playing a magic trombone in an arcane ritual when there was a sudden flurry of movement to the left of their table. He looked over and found himself staring at an old man with a long, bushy white beard standing next to their table.

Apart from the beard and a deeply panicked expression, the old man was wearing nothing but what appeared to be an old bed sheet wrapped around him.

"Please, I need your help-" the old man began.

"Toga party's in the Tiki Lounge," Kaykor interrupted, gesturing roughly in the direction of the VIP area before turning back to his drink. But the old man stayed where he was.

"Please! The fate of the world is at stake! The whole universe in fact!" the old man exclaimed. He made to grab one of Kaykor's arms as if in emphasis, but the look he got in response made him pull back his hand very quickly.

"Maybe you should go and try the other side of the club?" Orchid suggested, sipping from a drink that seemed to be comprised almost entirely of paper umbrellas and colourful plastic stirrers. "You know, the **hero** side?"

"There's no-one else!" the old man replied, and Kaykor had to admit that he seemed pretty stressed out about **something**. "Please, heroes and villains alike are in danger! I do not care whether you call yourselves good or evil, but the fate of the world is at stake, and you may be the only ones able to save it!"

"The bouncers in this place really need to pay more attention to who they let in," Geoff muttered.

If it had just been these three members of Evil Industries, that would have been the end of it. Violence was not allowed in the Pocket D, but Kaykor and his teammates would have been more than happy to simply ignore the obviously mad old man standing at their table until he got the message and went away.

"Hey! Are you Santa? Where's your red suit?"

Unfortunately for Evil Industries, however, Vraenar was also there.

"Look guys, it's Santa! Are you delivering presents, Santa? Can we help you?"

It didn't really make Kaykor feel any better to see that the old man looked as confused as the rest of them at Vraenar's excited outbursts.

"No... My name is Old Father Time. But I do need your help-" the old man tried to explain; unfortunately, once Vraenar had an idea in his head, it generally took nothing short of a team of experienced neurosurgeons to get rid of it.

"Sure, Santa! Sure we'll help you! Won't we guys?" Vraenar turned expectantly to his teammates, who just stared at him and the old man with sinking feelings in their stomachs. Eventually, in a deeply exaggerated gesture, Kaykor checked his watch and sighed.

"Well, I guess we might just have the time to hear you out, old man-" he began.

"That's just the problem!" the old man – 'Old Father Time' – interrupted. "If we don't act soon, there won't be any more time at all!"

"I'm sorry," Geoff said. "We may break a lot of laws, but the laws of Physics are kind of out of our jurisdiction."

"Let me explain," Old Father Time continued. "Every year, at midnight on the last day, I have to pass my mantle onto Baby New Year, so that the year can begin anew and time can continue. But someone has kidnapped Baby New Year! A Red Cap named Snaptooth has teamed up with the Winter Lord, and they plan to take Baby New Year into the lands of the Fey, where he will be trapped! And if that happens, all time will stop at midnight on New Year's Eve!"

75 of Evil Industries just looked at him (Vraenar was trying not to jump up and down in his seat with excitement). Eventually, Orchid spoke for most of them. "You want us to go rescue a baby, who's not really a baby but an anthropomorphic personification of time and, more specifically, rebirth, from a great big garden gnome?"

Old Father Time nodded gravely.

Kaykor, Orchid and Geoff looked at each other for a few seconds. Eventually Kaykor shrugged.

"What the hell, it should kill a few hours."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: City of Heroes and its associated trademarks is owned by NCSoft and Cryptic Studios. I am making no money whatsoever from this fanfic.

* * *

Kaykor Death **hated** snow. He hated it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. He hated it even more than he hated the man who had won the 2005 Rogue Isles _Streetfighter_ Look-alike Contest by shaving a bear and calling it Zangief.

He hated it because when your legs were cybernetic, snow caused you two major problems. One was that little bits of snow would always get into all the joints, servos and motors. And because snow was really just frozen water, this would invariably cause jams, stalls and short circuits in the various mechanisms. Which led to Kaykor Death staggering around like a member of the Ministry for Silly Walks.

The other problem was that, with snow, there was more often than not ice as well. Kaykor now had detailed plans in his head to fit deployable skis to his cybernetic legs in time for next winter, but those plans were of course no use to him in the here and now.

In retrospect, careening into the group of giant goat-men ('Tuatha de Dannon', Orchid had called them) while screaming obscenities **had** given them an advantage in that their opponents were too stunned to act for a few moments, and Kaykor himself had managed to knock one of them a clear six feet just by crashing headlong into it... but it was hardly how he wanted to conduct himself normally. Plus he was sure he wasn't going to be able to get the taste of goat-fur out of his mouth for **days**...

And the less said about his robots the better. Not only where they having the same problems throughout their whole bodies that Kaykor was having with his legs, they also lacked the programming necessary to understand that stomping forward at a run across frozen ponds and lakes was not the best course of action. Their force fields (and Kaykor was never happier that he had built **that** upgrade when he did) at least protected them from damage when they invariably fell over, but it also meant that they kept bouncing off each other as they pitched across the ice. The end result was like watching some hideous android version of the Ice Capades.

The only good side to the situation was that, for once, Kaykor was not suffering alone.

Shadow Witch Orchid, for example, was also having more than a few problems walking through the snow. In her case it was because thigh-high boots with stiletto heels did not lend themselves too well to icy environments, but the end result was much the same as Kaykor's – she stumbled and cursed her way through the snow.

Orchid had another problem, however, in that not only was she improperly dressed for the weather in a short dress that might or might not have been made out of plant matter and little else, but that her partially-plant nature was not reacting at all well to the cold weather. Her thorns kept breaking off, for one thing, and the leaves on her vines were blackened with frost. Kaykor couldn't help but wonder if they were going to have to stop to feed her Baby-Bio or something, or put little woollen booties on her too keep her warm – or was that just for runner beans?

Geoff wasn't doing as badly, on the other hand. Not being a cyborg or part plant certainly helped in his case, and to deal with the cold he had simply added a chunky, multicoloured scarf to his costume. It did look rather strange, but Kaykor found himself wishing **he'd** thought of something like that.

Unfortunately, Geoff's powers **were** being affected by the weather. Specifically, snow absorbed radiation, and so Geoff was doing somewhat less damage than he normally might have because of all the snow flurries in the air. Kaykor also suspected that he was getting a little irritated at having to teleport him along every time his legs jammed.

As for Vraenar...

"Hey, look everyone! I'm making a snow angel!"

Vraenar was wearing earmuffs. The earmuffs were electric blue in colour.

The small group stumbled, staggered, shuffled and ran to the top of the small hill they had been climbing to try to get a better view of their surroundings. It didn't really help. The poor visibility caused by the snow blowing all around them meant that, for the most part, they could barely see more than a few meters ahead of themselves. The only thing they could make out with any sort of clarity, in fact, was what looked like a giant snowman. It seemed to be coming towards them...

"Hey!" Vraenar exclaimed. "Is that Frosty the Snowman?"

"GRRRRYYYYYAAAAARRRR!"

An icy blast of wind knocked the four of them to the ground. Half buried in a snowdrift, Kaykor answered for the three of them.

"No, Vraenar, I don't think it is."


End file.
